Sunday, August 30, 2015

Staunton, August 30 – According to
the Global Wealth Report, Russia leads the world in terms of inequality of
wealth with the top one percent having 71 percent of the wealth of the country,
a far higher figure than in other countries, including the United States,
according to Moscow commentator Igor Yakovenko.

But what is worse about this is that
those at the top of the wealth pyramid in Russia generally go there not by their
own efforts as is the case in the West but rather by raiding state assets and
selling them off and have not displayed the inclination to philanthropy that
Western billionaires typically do (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=55E1D63C9A0CE).

Tragically, Yakovenko says, the
situation in Russia reflects not some short term conjunction of events as many
think but rather deeper problems that did not arise with Vladimir Putin and will
not end with his ouster, however desirable that may be. And he points to “two
historic sources” of “’the Russian world.’”

On the one hand is the Mongol horde,
whose heritage to Russia was the denial of any notion of justice. “The victor
gets everything.” The vanquished nothing, and “any good thing comes only from
the powers that be,” a view shared by Catherine the Great, Joseph Stalin and
now Putin.

On the other hand as a source of
Russian values, he points out, is Russian Orthodoxy, which “in contrast to
Western Christendom orients the individual to life after death and not to
success in present-day life.”That is
why, Yakovenko continues, “there aren’t any successful Orthodox countries in the
world.”

“Culture can stimulate progress or
it can be a brake. Russian culture in all its greatness … has become a brake on
the progress of the country. It is capable of developing geniuses who escaping
abroad can become Nobel laureates and make a contribution to the development of
other countries” but not to their own.

“The current sense that once Putin
is removed, the country will quickly move toward progress and flourishing is
thus an illusion,” the commentator continues. “It is a very dangerous
minimization of the size of the task ahead. Putin undoubtedly is the chief part
of visible evil” and his removal and trial are “an obvious tactical task.”

But even if that happens, Yakovenko
says, it “will not create the conditions for progress of the country and will
not guarantee a revanchist return of Putinism in another packaging.” Other
countries have succeeded in overcoming this kind of challenge, but Russia hasn’t
– and if it fails this time, he concludes, it may not get another chance.